by Tamara Leigh
Michael leaned back in his chair. All that stood between Simon and justice was Baron Lavonne who had yet to collect the accused.
As often happened when Beatrix came to mind, Michael reached to the purse on his belt but stopped himself from pulling forth the pale tress. Why did he persist in holding onto it as one might a talisman?
Determinedly, he settled his gaze on the wench who gathered his garments from atop the chest at the foot of his bed. Try though he did to summon desire, it eluded him.
A rap on the door sounded.
“Enter!” Michael called.
Squire Percival stepped inside. “My lord—” He snapped his teeth closed when the wench came to notice.
“Leave us,” Michael ordered the woman.
She sent him another of her smiles and swayed toward the door.
Squire Percival closed it behind her. “Apologies, my lord. I would not disturb you if not that—”
“What have you for me?”
“A question, my lord.”
Beatrix again. It had to be. And from the knit of Percival’s brow, her latest request troubled him. First, she had begged soap, next an extra blanket, then hand towels. After those first days, Michael had told the squire to use his own judgment, needing no more of her intrusions on his thoughts than already he endured. So what did she want now? A rope with which to mend an unsprung bed? A dagger with which to poke at viands?
“What does she wish?”
“Writing instruments, my lord. I did not think you—”
“Rightly so.” What did she want to write? And who? Surely she did not think to steal a missive to her family who still likely believed her dead? “She did not say what she needed them for?”
“I fear I did not ask. I shall, though.” He turned.
“Nay, I will go.”
The squire came around. “You, my lord?” He glanced at Michael’s splinted leg.
He should not, Michael knew. Far better to remain distant, but whatever Beatrix plotted, he would discover it for himself. He reached for the staff, pushed onto it, and turned to Percival.
“I should accompany you, my lord?”
“Nay.” Michael stepped toward him. “I but require the key.”
The squire dropped it in his palm.
“I will return anon.” And he would, for once he stamped out Beatrix’s scheme, there would be nothing to hold him to her. But if that were so, why did he feel as if he approached a pool of fresh water following days of unquenched thirst?
Silently vowing he cared nothing for her, he stepped from the solar. Though he easily negotiated the corridor, the tight, winding stair presented a challenge that had him aching deep when he finally reached the door of Beatrix’s prison and fit the key.
Before he stepped inside, he cursed himself. Before he settled his gaze on her, he named himself a fool.
She faced him where she stood at the foot of the bed, blue eyes bright and lips slightly bowed as the daylight pouring through the uncovered window cast a glow around her. No longer did she wear men’s garments, but a gown. As his eyes grew accustomed to the lit room, he saw she had plaited her flaxen hair and the strands that had escaped curved becomingly around her face—a face that bore faint resemblance to the gaunt woman who had foraged fish for him at the abbey. An angel once more.
All be cursed! A fortnight of retracing her guilt was nearly undone with one glance. As innocent as she looked, she had killed Simon.
Beatrix held the stare of the man before her. If not for the sound of his staff on the stairs, she would have hesitated over him, as he looked different with a full beard. Not at all like Simon D’Arci.
She pushed a stray hair behind an ear. Though she knew she should not care how she looked, a wish slipped in that she had asked for a mirror in addition to the comb. Then another wish that it was a lady’s gown she wore and not this rough garment that had seemed a luxury minutes past. And if only she had not lingered near the brazier. Though faint, the smell of smoke permeated her gown.
Michael D’Arci entered. Every footfall allowing a glimpse of his discomfort at having ascended the stairs, he followed his staff’s lead across the chamber. Unfortunately, there was no chair on which he might settle. There was only her small bed, and that would not do.
Looking hale in spite of the splint, the staff doing nothing to diminish his presence, he halted three feet in front of her and swept his gaze to her feet and up again. “You are much improved, Lady Beatrix.”
She smoothed the skirt of her gown. “You feed me well, my lord.”
A dark eyebrow slid up his brow. “And clothe you, it seems.”
He had not known. Of course, his squire would not perceive a request for women’s garments as threatening as a request for writing instruments.
She moistened her lips. “I had hoped you would come.”
Her words unsettled the indifference with which he regarded her, causing his eyebrows to jerk and firm mouth to ease. However, he soon enough tightened his face. “For what do you wish parchment and ink?”
Was she wrong? With each passing day without retaliation for his brother’s death, she grew increasingly certain there would be none, that what had happened in the wood had changed what he believed of her. But if she was wrong, why did she remain untouched? He did not need both legs firm beneath him to seek justice.
“I wait,” he snapped.
“I wish to write down my…defense.”
His nostrils flared. “Defense?”
“If I cannot speak it, I shall read it.” For the sake of her uncertain tongue, she would commit to parchment what had happened that day at the ravine.
Pale eyes sharpening, Michael stepped closer. “Why?”
The nearness of him causing chill bumps to rise across her skin, she quelled the urge to rub her arms. “I…”
“Speak, Lady Beatrix.”
She looked to his grip on the staff. Excepting the ink that stained his fingers—evidence he had recently applied quill to parchment—his large hand was ashen.
Which was greater? His anger or his suffering? “I wish a trial, Lord D’Arci. Thus, I beseech you to send word of my…capture to Baron Lavonne.”
His lids narrowed. “Then still you seek absolution.”
“Not absolution by cause of a mind gone m-mad. Absolution only should I prove my…innocence.”
Something flickered in his eyes, something that seemed to ease the anger there. “You think you can prove it?”
She had to try, and just maybe God would work a miracle. If not, she would likely be hanged or drowned. Perhaps even burned.
Beatrix lowered her gaze and tried to talk back the tears that threatened. She was past such, and yet the thought of losing all when she was just beginning to find herself again, pained her.
She startled when Michael’s calloused fingers grazed the underside of her chin. “Look at me, Beatrix.”
Had he truly been so intimate with her name? She tried to blink away the moisture that aspired to her lashes, but it remained. She swept her lids up.
“Why did you not leave me in the crypt?”
Unsettled by his unexpected question, she shook her head. “What?”
“You could have fled but you did not. Why?”
“I could not. God would not allow it.”
“God?”
She smiled softly. “Do you know Him, Michael?”
He released her chin. “As much as I care to know Him.”
Though she should not be surprised by his irreverence, she was. “You do not mean that.”
He shrugged. “Where is God? Tell me where He is now that you need Him?”
Though she risked much, she sensed he truly wished to know. She took a step nearer and pressed a hand to her heart. “He is here. Always.” She turned her hand and laid it to his chest. “And here if you will allow Him to be.”
He lowered his gaze to her hand upon him. When he looked up, there was something in his eyes that might have been desperation. “D
id you do it? Did you murder my brother?”
“You know I did not.” Feeling his heart beat strong and quick beneath her palm, she said, “Here you know it. You have but to accept it”—she touched his brow—“here.”
He stilled as if to heed the beat of his heart, then slid a hand around the back of her neck. “’Tis as I wish to do.”
A small sound parted Beatrix’s lips and came again when he looked to her mouth. This stir, this churning, this strange ache that she had last felt when they met between their hoods in the wood…
As she watched, his pupils spread until all that remained of the color was a fine ring of gray. With a groan, he pulled her in.
She did not resist when his head lowered. Savoring the feel of his lips and the rasp of his beard across her skin, she leaned in, causing him to slant his head and deepen the kiss. She shuddered. However, when she slid her hands up and gripped his shoulders, he wrenched his mouth from hers.
“Your word!” His breath was harsh on her moist lips.
“What?”
“I want your word that you did not kill him!”
At the realization that Simon was yet between them, her heart jumped. “I…vow I did not kill your brother.”
No man’s struggle could have been clearer. It convulsed Michael’s jaw, flared his nostrils, narrowed his eyes. And then his mouth closed over hers.
The kiss was long and hungry, broken only when he moved to her jaw, next her neck, then the shockingly sweet spot between neck and shoulder.
Beatrix dropped her head back. She did not fully understand what was happening between them, but she wanted more. Whatever more was.
It was the bed’s familiar creak and groan that stepped into her consciousness—and her conscience. Looking down, she saw he had eased her to sitting on the edge of the mattress.
“Yield to me, Beatrix.” He reached for the hem of her skirts.
Caught between the desire to give him what he wanted and the certainty that it was wrong, she could not move. But then Simon D’Arci slipped in to remind her of the last time she had been so near a man, the memory rousing a fear so deep she nearly choked. But when she blinked, it was Michael before her. A man not his brother. Still, it was wrong.
Michael ground his teeth to keep from moving too quickly with Beatrix. Excepting a moment when she had stiffened, she had shown no fear of intimacy as he had thought she might with her talk of ravishment. Still, he did not want to embrace her as one might a harlot. She was not that. Nor was she a murderer, he acquiesced. Whatever the explanation for Simon’s death—and he would have it from her later—she could not have murdered.
He glided a hand up her hosed calves, making her gasp, but when he touched her thigh, she twisted away.
“Nay!” She lunged to standing and hastened to the foot of the bed. “We should not.”
He turned to her. “Why?”
“It is wrong. ’Tis fornication. A woman should come to her husband chaste—a virgin.”
Michael stepped toward her. “But that you no longer are.”
“I am! I have…lain with no man.”
He halted. She claimed to be untouched—undefiled. Meaning it was not defense against ravishment by which Simon now lay dead and buried. For something else this woman had given his brother the dagger. She was no different from Edithe.
“God’s eyes!” he growled. “Lies!”
Her eyes widened. “Michael?”
“Aye, Michael D’Arci, brother to Simon D’Arci.” He halted over her. “You remember him, do you not? The same who ravished you and, for it, was put through with a Wulfrith dagger?”
Color receding, she shook her head.
“Tell me, Lady Beatrix, how it is a ravished woman remains a virgin?”
“Pray—”
“That you ought to do. ’Tis your only hope, though not much of one.”
“I beseech you, allow me to explain what happened. I…remember now.”
“Of course you do.” He looked to the door he had left agape and was grateful none had come through it to witness his dishonor.
“The day we rode to…Soaring, and I fell from your destrier, I remembered the struggle on your brother’s horse when he…touched me as he should not have. His horse reared—”
“Enough!” Michael gripped her shoulder. “You are the same as Edithe, and were you the sweetest honey, still I would spit you out.”
Confusion stirred her gaze, but something else displaced it. Had he stabbed her as she had done Simon, the pain could not have shone brighter from her eyes. Tears pooled in their depths, making them sparkle like the brightest star in the darkest night.
“You know not how wrong you are,” she choked.
As when he had drawn near her, the faint smell of smoke that clung to her teased his nostrils, somehow made sensual by the act he had nearly committed with her. Disgusted that twice in one life he should fall prey to a faithless woman, he released her, retrieved his staff, and swung away. Canute had been right. For all the older man’s wisdom and loyalty, few were the words Michael had spoken to him these past weeks.
“What of my trial?” Beatrix called as he reached the door.
He swept his staff around. “Be assured, as soon as it can be arranged, you shall have it.”
“This day you will send word of my…capture?”
He ought to smile, but his mouth was too stiff. “I shall not.”
“But—”
“Word was sent a fortnight past.”
She caught her breath. “I…did not think you would.”
Hating that she had come to know him so well, grateful Canute knew her better, Michael said, “Do not think to know me, Lady Beatrix, for you never shall.”
Though her eyes remained bright, anger stirred there. “Why would I wish to know a blackguard like you, Michael D’Arci? As you say that I am the same as this…Edithe, so you are the same as your brother.”
He knew there was no reason to be offended, but her words raked him. Setting his staff to the landing, he stepped without.
All of her aching, from her eyes, to her wracked heart, to the soles of her feet, Beatrix stared at the door as it closed. In anticipation of what always followed, she lowered her lids.
Scrape. Click.
She told herself she was not hurt by Michael’s revelation, but it was no use. Following their arrival at Castle Soaring, when she had begun to believe she need not fear him and worried she might not convince him to reveal her capture that she could go to trial, he had sent word. And now, this day, he had finally kissed her as if—
A sob escaped her, and she was thankful he was too far descended to hear. For nothing would she have him know the fullness of the pain he had inflicted. She lowered to her knees alongside the bed. Though she knew she was where she ought to be, she could summon no words to pour out her grief to the Lord. She was simply too angry.
Sitting back on her heels, she stared at her white knuckles and silently vowed she would allow no man so near her again.
“Nor shall I weep.” Especially for Michael D’Arci who was unworthy of a single tear. Michael D’Arci who had sent word.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“My lord!”
Michael looked up as the man-at-arms negotiated the tables that were settled by those who partook of the nooning meal. “What tidings?” he asked.
The soldier halted before the dais. As those at the lower tables quieted to witness the news, he said, “Your lady mother is come, my lord.”
Maude. Not his mother, though Simon’s mother was as near a mother as Michael had. Now, without warning, she came to Soaring. He was not surprised. Despite her uncertain health and any other obstacle in her path, she always came and went at will. Nevertheless, Michael was piqued that she had ignored his urging to stay away from the trial. Though the date was not yet determined, a missive had been delivered to Soaring yesterday advising that the sheriff would come for Beatrix six days hence. It would pain Maude much to hear the lies Beatrix
intended to speak of her beloved son.
Michael inclined his head. “Very good.”
“She comes unto the donjon now, my lord.”
Of course she would not wait so that he might properly greet her. Indeed, it was her voice that ascended the steps outside the great doors. If he did not lengthen his stride, she would be across the hall before he.
Michael gripped the staff and pushed upright. “Return to your meals,” he ordered those who had paused over their trenchers.
He was halfway across the great room when Maude appeared. Her small stature making her seem almost a child, she paused inside the doorway and squinted at the occupants. Eyes slow to adjust to the relative dim, she called, “Michael!”
He received her into his arms. She had regained some of the weight lost to her recent illness, he noted as he returned her hug, and her arms about him were not those of one frail and infirm. Too, when she drew back and lifted her face, a sparkle was returned to eyes previously bereft of light. The news of Beatrix’s capture had to have heartened her.
She frowned over him. “Pity you are not as pleased to see me as I am to see you.”
Why deny it when she would know it for a lie? “Circumstances only, dear Maude.” He shifted his weight to the staff. “I had hoped you would allow me to see to this matter for you.”
Some of the light faded from her eyes, aging her more than the silver that claimed much of her blond hair. “You knew I would not.”
As he released her, the elegant Lady Laura paused inside the great doors. Clothed in green that sparkled with the gold thread woven through it, sleeves lined with ermine, she looked as untouchable ever, even with the dark-haired little girl of three winters perched on her hip.
Unfortunate, Michael mused as he stared at the child whose smile always tugged at his heart. Though her mother had been destined to wed a baron, Lady Laura would likely pass the remainder of her days as a lady’s companion. A tryst, while fostered with Maude, had produced the child and caused a scandal that saw the young woman disavowed by her family. Fortunately, Maude’s kind heart and sense of responsibility prevailed. Not only had she given Lady Laura a permanent and esteemed place in her household, but she had made room for little Clarice. Lady Laura could not hope for better.